{"id":8087,"date":"2021-12-30T09:05:18","date_gmt":"2021-12-30T09:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=8087"},"modified":"2021-12-30T09:15:10","modified_gmt":"2021-12-30T09:15:10","slug":"michael-sheen-echoing-interesting-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2021\/12\/30\/michael-sheen-echoing-interesting-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Sheen ECHOING INTERESTING TIMES"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Michael Sheen ECHOING INTERESTING TIMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Norman Warwick<\/strong> learns about the man behind the actor <\/p>\n\n\n\n

as Michael Sheen speaks with Patrick Smith of The Independent<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Actor Michael Sheen (left) recently asserted that \u2018Boris Johnson is the absolute worst of what politics can be.\u2019 The actor was speaking with Patrick Smith the Independent\u2019s Head of Culture. He specialises in profile interviews and writes about music, film and TV . I wonder whether, as a Newcastle United fan, he viewed the club\u00b4s former ownership in much the same way as Sheen spoke of the PM ? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Sheen is known for capturing the vocal nuances of the likes of another politician Tony Blair, television socialite and journalist David Frost and Brian Clough the former Nottingham Forest and Derby County manager and, of course, of that Damned United (right). He is more than a mimic, though. He is an extraordinary actor. He had the dynamism and demonism of Blair down to a tee and his portrayal of David Frost captured the fears and unease of a man who seemed to glide through life back in the day but who was paddling like heck underneath in a search of a current to peaceful waters. Sheen\u00b4s Clough was, like the football manager himself, an incredible piece of work. The actor caught him as the stuffing was knocked out of him, showing us the crumbling of an ego and sadness of a life that gradually lost its lustre. We saw clues to Clough\u00b4s future that neither Cloughie himself, nor his admirers, recognised at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martin Sheen, The \u2018Frost\/Nixon\u2019 and \u2018Good Omens\u2019 star recently explained to the Independent\u00b4s Head of Culture,  Patrick Smith<\/a> why the prime minister seems to have \u2018no personal ethics, morals or beliefs\u2019 as he discusses his new time-travel fantasy, cancel culture, and becoming a \u2018not-for-profit\u2019 actor<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We should not be too surprised as Sheen\u00b4s outspoken manner because, as Mr. Smith suggested right at the top of his interview,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4Michael Sheen isn\u2019t one to mince his words. Even before <\/em>Boris Johnson<\/em><\/a> finds himself at the centre of the <\/em>Christmas<\/em><\/a> party scandal, the Welsh star of Frost\/Nixon has our PM in his crosshairs.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe\u2019s the absolute worst of what politics can be,\u201d<\/em><\/strong> says the 52-year-old, his voice rich and lilting.<\/em> \u201cA man who doesn\u2019t seem to care or believe in anything other than his own advancement, and, as a result of immense privilege, has been able to get to the most powerful position in the country and then doesn\u2019t use it to make people\u2019s lives better. Everything is a game to him.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Sheen, (right) stops, reloads<\/em>. \u201cHe seems to have no personal ethics, morals, beliefs, value system. So I will be immensely happy to see the back of him, not just from being prime minister but out of the political arena altogether. I hope he goes off and finds a job that has no influence whatsoever on anything in our cultural, social or economic life.\u201d Deep breath. Exhale. \u201cAnd good luck to him with that.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disconcertingly, Sheen delivers this diatribe while sporting a shock of white blond hair, like a vertiginously quiffed version of the Boris bouffant. Unlike Johnson, though, he doesn\u2019t seem to be spouting hot air. The actor, after all, sold his houses to bankroll the 2019 Homeless World Cup. The following year he revealed that he\u2019d handed back the OBE he was awarded in 2009 for fear of being, in his words, a hypocrite. And earlier this month, he declared himself a<\/em> \u201cnot-for-profit actor\u201d, pledging to use future earnings to fund social projects. He\u2019s a walk-walker in a crowd of talk-talkers. That there is any hair similarity today \u2013 Sheen\u2019s mane is ordinarily dark, scraggly and flecked with grey \u2013 is down to him currently filming a second series of Good Omens, Amazon\u2019s devilishly entertaining adaptation of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman\u2019s apocalyptic novel.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, transformation is Sheen\u2019s usual milieu \u2013 a bald cap here, some peroxide mutton chops there \u2013 but his talents extend way beyond artifice. British screenwriter and playwright Peter Morgan called him \u201cthe most technically accomplished actor we have\u201d.<\/em> Certainly, he has<\/em> an uncanny gift for mimicry \u2013 whether playing an obsequious, neatly coiffed Tony Blair (in The Deal, The Queen and The Special Relationship), a smarmy, roguish David Frost (Frost\/Nixon), or a bumptious, beady-eyed Brian Clough (in The Damned United).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ever since graduating from Rada and making a name for himself on stage in Peer Gynt (1994) and Amadeus (for which he was nominated for an Olivier award in 1998), he\u2019s been drawn to misfits and eccentrics.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cI\u2019ve always been more comfortable playing some kind of contradiction between what\u2019s going on on the surface and what\u2019s going on underneath,\u201d<\/em><\/strong> he tells me. \u201cOften characters who have a level of performance about them. Tony Blair was performing in all kinds of ways. Frost was performing. Clough was performing. If you were with them in real life, it might not be the most comfortable experience.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

More often than not<\/em><\/strong>, he continues<\/em>, the leading role in a romantic drama or an action film ends up being more of a plot device than a character with any discernible depth. \u201cMy instincts are always to try and make the character more interesting in some way, and that can often be to the detriment of a lot of very popular stories,\u201d he says. \u201cSo I think I\u2019ve either not been offered those parts because I\u2019ve not seemed the right fit, or I\u2019ve turned them down.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

His latest character would definitely be classed as an oddball. In the time-travel fantasy Last Train to Christmas, airing today on Sky Cinema, Sheen plays Tony Towers (left)<\/strong>, a brash Nottingham nightclub impresario with a terrible Eighties mullet and a taste for cheap champagne. On a train home for the festive season with his brother (Cary Elwes) and much younger girlfriend (Nathalie Emmanuel), Towers discovers that whenever he moves between carriages he\u2019s suddenly transported to a different decade, where he\u2019s allowed a peek at the diverging paths his life might have taken.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naturally, just as he hops between decades, so the hair and costumes change \u2013 we get everything from Seventies rocker and besuited Eighties music exec to a Nineties daytime DJ in very short shorts. As is traditional with festive fare, the film is funny, heartwarming and tinged with melancholy \u2013 think of it as a wintry cocktail of A Christmas Carol, It\u2019s a Wonderful Life and Sliding Doors.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTony Towers is a character full of bluff and ego and nonsense, who is forced to look at himself in a way that he never has; forced to look at choices he\u2019s made and then tried to put right, and then made even more of a mess,\u201d<\/em><\/strong> says Sheen. \u201cI like that deconstruction of a character who you wouldn\u2019t normally see deconstructed. He\u2019d normally be a supporting part, a laugh and a clich\u00e9 and a bit of a stereotype, but you start to see there is actually a lot more to him.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In all honesty, Sheen (shown right as David Frost)<\/strong> needed the work, having two years ago given \u201cevery penny that was in my bank account\u201d to fund the Homeless World Cup in Cardiff. Eight weeks before the charity football event, recalls Sheen, there was \u201ca bit of disaster\u201d, leaving him with two weeks to finance it personally. \u201cThe advice was to walk away, but I just felt I couldn\u2019t let that happen, so I had to try and convince everyone to stay on board.\u201d He sold his properties in the US and the UK to raise the cash. \u201cIt was a lot of stress,\u201d says Sheen, whose partner, the Swedish actor Anna Lundberg, was pregnant at the time.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the tournament was an unqualified success, he beams. \u201cOne of the things it taught me was that I could risk a lot more of my own finances on funding things that matter to me. I realised I was making myself into a social enterprise. I was becoming a sort of non-profit actor. All the profits I made, I would pump back into the things that I cared about and that mattered to me. So, in a way, the disaster that was averted actually gave me the confidence to go a bit further.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is exactly the kind of altruism that gets you an OBE, I tell him.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Famously, Sheen was awarded one in 2009 for services to drama, but returned it after he was invited to give the 2017 Raymond Williams Memorial Lecture in honour of the late Welsh socialist. After delving into the history of English imperialism in Wales, he says he realised that if he was \u201cto deliver that lecture while holding an OBE, that would make me very hypocritical. So I had to either not do the lecture or give the OBE back.\u201d Although receiving it \u201cfelt like being capped for my country, which, as someone who wanted to be a footballer at one point in life, was very special to me\u201d, returning it was something he could live with more easily.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Sheen the actor is driven and chameleonic, Sheen the person is laidback, with an air of rugged self-belief. Growing up in Port Talbot, the hometown of both Anthony Hopkins and Richard Burton, Sheen has showbiz lineage: his great-great-grandmother was an elephant-trainer and lion-tamer, while his father tried his hand as a Jack Nicholson impersonator. Initially, though, football was the dream, and he was offered a trial by Arsenal after being spotted by the father of ex-Gunners\u2019 centre-back Tony Adams during a family holiday at Pontins on the Isle of Wight.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was at my peak at 12,\u201d<\/em><\/strong> says Sheen, who, in his words, \u201cskinned\u201d a young Adams that day. \u201cI objectively have proof that I was really good because I often played on the Arsenal youth team.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 14, he\u2019d fallen for acting. \u201cIt was one of the happiest times of my life,\u201d <\/strong>he says. \u201cIt was a magic balance to have, to be learning about something new and at the same time realising you have an aptitude for it and a passion for it. It coincided with me being part of the [National] Youth Theatre. I would live in this old building with about 40 other young people who loved doing it at the same time. And a lot of them were older than me, so I remember a 21-year-old Russell T Davies was just finishing his time as a student as I was sort of starting it. The possibilities for a life were just opening up for me. My heart would be broken for the first time the following year. So I still hadn\u2019t had that heartbreak yet. I had no responsibilities, I had nothing, I didn\u2019t have to pay bills, I didn\u2019t have to do anything that I didn\u2019t really want to.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Fast-forward to the mid-Nineties and the bills had started to arrive, but that feeling of \u201cexcitement and magic\u201d he got from acting remained. He was cast in a touring production of Chekhov\u2019s The Seagull, which is how he met Kate Beckinsale, with whom he had a daughter, Lily, in 1999. By the early Noughties, they\u2019d relocated to Hollywood and the roles would follow (from Underworld and Blood Diamond to Midnight in Paris and the TV drama Masters of Sex). Sheen (left)<\/strong> and Beckinsale separated in 2003, but not before he\u2019d made headlines for punching her co-star Jeremy Northam because he thought he was \u201cbeing disrespectful\u201d to Beckinsale on the set of The Golden Bowl<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sheen is sounding far too moony-eyed for his own good, so I can\u2019t resist getting him fired up just one more time before we leave. I ask if he ever worries about cancel culture, a question prompted by the fact that one Twitter user announced her intention to cancel him for \u201cframing\u201d the Welsh as an \u201cabused\u201d people.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTalking about it] is just a waste of time,\u201d<\/em><\/strong> he responds. \u201cThat\u2019s all you read about now. For every column that\u2019s about cancel culture, there\u2019s one fewer for real dangers and unfairnesses. The idea that being aware of social issues and aware of the injustices done to certain people, both historically and in the present, the idea that that gets labelled as woke and then is used as a pejorative, it just makes it so easy for people on the right, doesn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He gathers his thoughts.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like microwave dinners as politics.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Last Train to Christmas\u2019 premiered on 18 December on Sky Cinema <\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The primary source for this article was \u00a0written by Patrick Smith and was published in The Independent.<\/strong> The newspaper delivers excellent in-depth arts coverage. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our occasional re-postings Sidetracks And Detours are confident that we are not only sharing with our readers excellent articles written by experts but are also pointing to informed and informative sites readers will re-visit time and again. Of course, we feel sure our readers will also return to our daily not-for-profit blog knowing that we seek to provide core original material whilst sometimes spotlighting the best pieces from elsewhere, as we engage with genres and practitioners along all the sidetracks & detours we take.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article was collated by Norman Warwick, a weekly columnist with Lanzarote Information and owner and editor of this daily blog at Sidetracks And Detours.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Norman has also been a long serving broadcaster, co-presenting the weekly all across the arts programme on Crescent Community Radio for many years with Steve, and his own show on Sherwood Community Radio. He has been a regular guest on BBC Radio Manchester, BBC Radio Lancashire, BBC Radio Merseyside and BBC Radio 4.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a published author and poet he was a founder member of Lendanear Music, with Colin Lever and Just Poets with Pam McKee, Touchstones Creative Writing Group (where he was creative writing facilitator for a number of years) with Val Chadwick and all across the arts with Robin Parker.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Monday to Friday,<\/strong> you will find a daily post here at Sidetracks And Detours and, should you be looking for good reading, over the weekend you can visit our massive but easy to navigate archives of over 500 articles.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The purpose of this daily not-for-profit blog is to deliver news, previews, interviews and reviews from all across the arts to die-hard fans and non- traditional audiences around the world. We are therefore always delighted to receive your own articles here at Sidetracks And Detours. So if you have a favourite artist, event, or venue that you would like to tell us more about just drop a Word document attachment to me at <\/strong>normanwarwick55@gmail.com<\/strong><\/a> with a couple of appropriate photographs in a zip folder if you wish. Being a not-for-profit organisation we unfortunately cannot pay you but we will always fully attribute any pieces we publish. You therefore might also. like to include a brief autobiography and photograph of yourself<\/strong> in your submission. We look forward to hearing from you.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sidetracks And Detours is seeking to join the synergy of organisations that support the arts of whatever genre. We are therefore grateful to all those share information to reach as wide and diverse an audience as possible.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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songfacts                                           en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/SongFacts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThat\u2019s all you read about now. For every column that\u2019s about cancel culture, there\u2019s one fewer for real dangers and unfairnesses<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cinema"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8087"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8099,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8087\/revisions\/8099"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}